When I was drawing this, I thought that it was going to be about Wednesday, but posted on Thursday. I actually drew it on Wednesday, in the internet free waning days of school. Today (Thursday) textbooks will be collected, really bringing home to students the point that school is all but finished. With that in mind, we still have six fun filled days left to the school year.

I say “fun filled” sarcastically.

Wednesday, when this was drawn, was supposed to be a day where some Suits came to my floor, quite honestly for reasons that I just plain don’t like. It didn’t happen, which is non-trivial in its interest factors…it could be some form of universal concept that Suits are poor at planning, or have some kind of instinctual avoidance of classes that are in session. Apparently, these Suits have rescheduled their visit for today, although the reasons remain the kind of thing that gets me pretty cranky.

That’s why the protagonist, Pony, and Quislet look both wary and cranky. Maybe like they are expecting to take some licks. Being nigh invulnerable doesn’t mean that you really LIKE getting knocked around, it just means that you can take it if you have to. Although, that same reasoning of being just tired of being kicked around, and maybe a bit on the unstable side, is why the giant over-image of Kyle McLaughlin’s “Agents of SHIELD” character, Cal/Mr. Hyde. I still really want to call him the Captain.

Ironically, once or twice in the four and half years of Adequacy, characters have called the protagonist of the strip Captain or Cap. Not so much as a name though, just a reference like “boss.”

The Captain (Calvin Zabo) is likeable, animated, interesting, fun…on the show, you kind of wait for Cal to show up, to see what will happen next. He’s honest to a fault, even about things that are awful. Cal has been pushed to a Point, and now that he’s at that Point…Cal’s not the nicest guy. He tries…but he has anger management problems derived from the Formula that makes him superstrong and pretty tough to kick around.

I’m at a point in my life and career where Cal’s character makes a whole bunch of sense to me. He has his values, and he sticks to them…and his expression of his emotions is generally considered “off point” or even just scary by the people around him. Throughout the season, he’s often apologized for things that make a kind of sense, been sorry for things that in a world of superpowers, you could see why he acts and feels that way. He’s not noble like the Avengers….but he’s understandable.

So yeah…that’s why he looms large in the image. Having downed his formula to be able to compete with Powered people, looking angry and unstable. Cal’s Big Thing is that he made his Formula, and as a result his powered persona as a coping mechanism, as almost a method of self defense in a world that just really scares him. He’s trying hard to use that persona and those powers to hold on to an ideal he has from the past, an ideal that just…isn’t workable in his context. It doesn’t stop him from lying to himself, or working to make that ideal happen. It just…isn’t going to.

None of the other people in his context, in his social circles, want that ideal at all. He’s the only one, and deluding himself in addition.

As my team of teachers is in the end stage of disintegration, Cal’s problems just seem to make sense. All the time he feels betrayed, or misled, and that makes him angry, and in turn…people don’t like him when he’s angry. Go figure.

Although I’m very defensive about these Suits, and want them nowhere me or my class….I’m going to maintain the wary and defensive stance of the protagonist. That’s not saying that I don’t like the idea of Calvin Zabo’s responses to things…but tha it can probably wait. I just would prefer to be left alone by people that have no real interest in me…which is fair on it’s face.

The background behind the looming Calvin Zabo is pretty metaphorical. I don’t really feel like getting into all of the symbolism at this point, but it’s pretty heavy handed. The crow, or raven if you will…either way, a scavenger that feeds off of things that are dead and gone. The feathers were a giant @#$%ing hassle, but worth the time for the visual…it gives a real symbolic lexicon for the morbid feeling hanging over the characters. Obviously, there is another bird symbol used pretty heavily in Adequacy past issues.

Right now, I am operating entirely in short term goals:

Do Not Interact With Strange Suits.
Finish The Year’s Grading.
Have Students Hand in Books.
Keep My Opinions to Myself.

None of those are as easy as they seem on their face.

“Some day…after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right and wrong of this. I cannot tell you.”